304 WOOL AND HIDES. 



the far greater tenderness with which the last of hides is 

 visited by export duties, when financial emergencies occur, 

 and must be met, than the sack of wool is. But it is also 

 plain from the very various prices at which cattle are bought, 

 that the value of the hide differed as greatly as the value which 

 the ox, steer, or whatever other name is applied to the animal, 

 was found to bear in the market, to say nothing of the fact 

 that our ancestors flayed and sold the skins of cattle that 

 perished of the various kinds of murrain which Walter de Henley 

 in the thirteenth and Fitzherbert in the sixteenth centuries 

 describe. 



The highest-priced wool in the schedule referred to above 

 is that obtained from the immediate neighbourhood of Leomin- 

 ster. This is valued at 13 the sack, or zos. the tod, a price 

 which I have never seen in any part of the thirteenth, four- 

 teenth, or fifteenth centuries, though it is found after the great 

 exaltation of prices in the sixteenth. Nor is any produce, as 

 estimated by the Commons in 1454, at anything near the value 

 of this particular brand. The nearest to it is that from the 

 soke of Leominster, by which I presume is meant the district 

 lying near the most favoured locality, and from the march of 

 Shropshire, which is valued at 9 $s. ^d. Then comes the 

 Cotswold wool, of which I have several entries from one 

 estate lying at the foot of those hills which are so famous 

 in the history of sheep-farming, worth .8 6s. 8d. The higher 

 lands of Lindsey in Lincolnshire yield a wool which is worth 

 5 13^. ^d. The produce of lower Lindsey, the best of 

 Herefordshire, and a district described as young Cotswold, 

 but which may mean Hogg wool from the locality, are valued 

 at .5 6s. %d. Certain parts of Lincoln and Notts, a district 

 called Cley, Banstead Down (Surrey), and Gloucestershire 

 produce an article worth 5, i.e. a little over js. 8d. the tod. 

 All the other qualities are below this value. 



The cheapest wool in the schedule is that grown in Sussex, 

 which is said to be worth 50^. the sack, or a fraction over 

 $s. lod. the tod. Suffolk is only a little better, 4^. the tod. 





